Summer Days

This morning the pastor encouraged us to spend the Sabbath day resting, and despite the myriad chores calling my name, I decided that she was right. I needed to be quiet and restful today. Mostly I stayed indoors doing nothing in particular (OK, I indulged in music). Then I decided to take a walk. Drew and I haven't been to a park in a few weeks, what with Kiel's departure and other activities. But Drew wasn't interested in going anywhere, so I let him rest in his way, and I took the walk alone.

What a glorious day! Clouds sheltered the brown grass from the scorching sun while locust punctuated the air with their shrill protests. Bees wandered everywhere, plunging deep into the hearts of warm fruit melting off branches. Birds perched tiredly on wind-tossed bushes, silently and half-heartedly pecking at ripe berries.

The wind ruffled a sea of buttercups and clover beneath my feet as I meandered in and out of the tree canopy shade overhead. Everywhere the smell of warm hay and grass engendered little whiffs of memories of days long past and eras unencumbered by PDAs and cell phones, hectic schedules and multitasking.

For a brief moment I was transported to the back of Gram Appleby's brown clapboard house in Scotia where on hot summer days the chickens in the coop stirred up dust and hay, scratching and clucking for bugs that inadvertently wandered over from the nearby garbage pit. I could almost see Gram's full length blue print apron as she tossed scraps over the wire fence, laughing through her coffee stained dentures at the antics of Biddy and at my scaredy-cat apprehension lest one of those cluckers peck me.

Seconds later I could have sworn Karen Armstrong's farm with its enticing hay mow was nearby. Once in a blue moon I got to visit their farm and spent hours sliding down that prickly hay shoot, laughing and cavorting with a dozen kids while we waited for the watermelon to be sliced. Ooh, the sweet juice ran all down our arms and dripped off our elbows, but we didn't care and we didn't bother to wash before jumping back in the hay mow to slide some more.

Not long after that, I could smell the rich black earth of Mom's garden in Fort Covington - her back forty where the vegetables for our winter meals were carefully grown and tended. She grew all sorts of weird and yucky things there, the likes of which any decent growing girl would turn her nose up at. Problem was, Mom never let us get away with refusing to eat good food (*her* definition of good, that is). I remember sitting at the kitchen table long after everyone else had left, staring at a pile of rutabaga and crying to no avail. I could not leave that table until the rutabaga was gone. I tried. I really tried to eat that horrible stuff. It was bitter and strong and stringy. I gagged and coughed and wailed. But there I sat. Until I discovered that I could slip most of the slimy stuff into the silverware drawer, strew the rest about on my plate, and be set free.

I was never sure if Mom found out. I wasn't smart enough to sneak back later and really discard the telltale signs. She must have known, but she never said anything to me. It was as hard on her as it was on me to go through one of those "Eat and be happy you have something to put in your stomach" sessions (we had long since stopped responding to her statement that there were starving children in India by telling her to mail them our unwanted dinner - it never got the desired results).

Then for just a moment, I thought I caught a whiff of Charley Lake where Dad had bought up an old hunter's shack and we spent time wading about in the mucky water (it was still knee deep about halfway across the lake) catching salamanders and frogs and splashing about on hot summer days, teasing the younger kids with threats of bloodsuckers spawned in the murky bottom mud.

Why is it that summer days are so grand? Perhaps because there is no school and adults seem less harried and burdened. Perhaps because there are more daylight hours and you can play longer into the evening. Perhaps because people aren't stuck indoors, isolated from each other. Whatever it is, I am glad for summer days when life is easier and days are happier. And I am glad the pastor reminded us to celebrate by taking a rest. Tomorrow classes begin. I shall have to work hard to hang onto those summer weekends for as long as I can. Too soon, they will flee away to become only a memory jogged into consciousness by a languid walk on some future summer day.

Make a memory. Hang onto it for all you are able. You never know when you might need one.